Working at a lab with a relatively low level-two biosafety rating, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka has created a strain of flu that can completely escape the human immune system.

Most people today have a level of immunity to the H1N1 flu, which is now regarded as a relatively low threat. Kawaoka genetically manipulated H1N1 so it can "escape" our neutralising antibodies. This would make the human immune systemand populationunable to resist an outbreak.

“Some experts cite the unexpected emergence of a new H1N1 strain of flu in 1977, which spread globally over three decades, as an early example of a flu virus being accidentally released from a lab. Genetic evidence points to it having escaped from a lab in China or the Soviet Union.”

“There are many examples of other infectious agents escaping from labs. Smallpox virus escaped from Birmingham Medical School in 1978 and killed a medical photographer, Janet Parker, the last person to die of smallpox. Foot and mouth virus escaped in 2007 from a veterinary lab in Surrey and in 2004 the SARS virus escaped from a high-containment lab in Beijing, infecting nine people before it was stopped.”

Well not all of humanity because eventually there won’t be enough people having contact with each other for it to transmit. Which is the reason why viruses tend not to be extremely fatal to their normal host (all bets are off on species jumpers), killing off the host too quickly is bad for the long term survival of the virus.

Can’t study how to fight extremely fatal viruses without extremely fatal viruses. Also recombining the flu in lab conditions gives them better ability to predict normal flu mutations, so maybe we could actually start making flu vaccines for the ACTUAL strains that will be spreading rather than best guessing (usually wrong).

“The warmers and ecowackos will love that. Lets let them do the clinical trials on it. Lookin for hands.”

Sometime in the ‘70’s an animal rights terrorist group attacked the CDC animal research building in Atlanta. They freed hundreds of lab animals. Among the experiments was a horror list of plagues. There were apparently not any infections probably because the rats died too quickly to pass on the diseases. I’m sure this whacko things he’ll win a Nobel prize. But the thought of something so foolish is sobering. Also, once he publishes his paper then anybody in the middle east can duplicate his “research.” Several years ago in a particularly bad outbreak of Ebola Iran sent scientists to collect samples for research.

Actually our window for resolving the Muslim terrorist problem is probably a lot shorter than we think.

It is not far-fetched to imagine some possible technology such that, first, virtually all sufficiently advanced civilizations eventually discover it, and second, its discovery leads almost universally to existential disaster.

The Big Bang Theory
Bernadette: Oh, I take pacts very seriously. One time at my lab, a petri dish of genetically modified super-virus went missing. That day we made a pinky swear never to admit we crossed Ebola with the common cold.

The article isn't particularly detailed. Apparently what the research was after was a pre-pandemic form of the virus. By "escape the immune system" it isn't really clear what is meant - it is, after all, the immune response to the viral presence that kills an influenza victim, not the virus itself.

I'm up for some zombie action, though. Imagine it: soulless, mindless bodies shambling all over the country moaning and devouring anything in their path. Like Bob Hope said: Democrats.

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